Relativity
by Ratin8tor
Summary: As a smart man once said "When a pretty girl sits on your lap for an hour, it seems like a minute. When you sit on a hot stove for a minute it seems like an hour." As for Rose Tyler, she comes to learn what relativity really means in the alternate universe she found herself in, with the alternate man she was given.


Talking to a girl

For hours that seem like minutes

Your hand placed in flames

For minutes that seem like hours

That is relativity.

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"Did I tell you about the time I met Einstein?" said the Doctor idly, as he helped Rose with the washing. Rose said nothing, knowing that the Doctor was bound to go off on one of his classic yarns that seemed to spiral out endlessly. There was little point in stopping him, not when he had that much energy and excitement.

"Helped him with his theory of relativity," said the Doctor, somewhat oblivious to Rose's disinterest. But it's not really his fault. He might be half-human, sure, but he still had the Doctor's soul somewhere in his one-hearted body. The Doctor was never the most observant of people. "Told him that it was how talking to a pretty girl makes hours seem like minutes and so on. Course people later credited him for it, but what can you do."

The Doctor stared wistfully, thinking back on that grand adventure. Truth be told he didn't remember what he looked like when he met the scientist. Was it the dandy, or was it the one with terrible fashion sense? His mind was getting so jumbled up sometimes.

Rose finished the washing, noting with amusement the candy-cane socks that she had pegged up. A present from her father, to help get the two of them in the Christmas spirit during their first year on this Earth. An Earth so much like her own, but not quite. Similar, but different. Familiar, but alien.

… Much like the man she use to love, the one who left her with a pale intimater. A man who could only live one life, but had lived so many more. A man who looked at the stars with the wistful gaze of an alcoholic looking at a bar.

"I going to go see my mum," said Rose, as the Doctor stood awkwardly, looking for something to do. There'd been in this new Earth for sixteen years, and still the Doctor hadn't quite mastered the nature of routine. Rose knew that leaving him alone by himself was like abandoning a very creative toddler, but there was only so much she could do.

"Yeah, bye," said the Doctor absentmindedly, still deep in memory. Rose said nothing, as she quickly gathered her things and left.

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"Twenty years ago you left all of us behind to go on an adventure with that man," said Jackie, as the two Tyler's wandered around the shopping mall. "Though if it even is twenty years, what with time being all funny here. I wonder what year it is back home."

Rose said nothing, trying to ignore the negative thoughts rushing through her mind. Instead, she decided to change the topic. "How's Tony?" she asked.

"Oh, he's a teenage boy," said Jackie. "Doesn't think his old mum knows what she's talking about, acting like he has the answers to everything. I tell you, the Doctor has not been a good influence on him, encouraging him to do all sorts of naughty things. Still, you can't fault your brother."

'Brother'. The idea still confused Rose even to this day. Yes, Jackie was her mother, Pete was her father, and by extension Tony would be her brother. But her father wasn't her father, but another version of her father. A version that lived a different life. It'd taken many years for them to finally come together as a family, to put aside their differences. Even then...

"Funny, isn't it?" concluded Jackie, to which Rose had no answer due to being lost deep in thought. "The different lives some people had compared to home," Jackie repeated, this time making sure she had Rose's attention. "I mean back in our world my old classmate ended up on welfare, but here she's one of the most famous stars on the planet! Course she never met this world's Jackie, so I can't really say hi, but it's funny how it works out."

Rose hummed in agreement, thinking back to what the Doctor had said about a parallel world being a gingerbread house. There had been a thrill, at the beginning, seeing the different lives everyone she'd known had taken. Thanks to her connections at Torchwood she could look up almost anyone, though the popularity of MySpace had rendered the ability moot in this day and age.

"Still, it's a good thing your father is here," said Jackie, as the two women continued to wander around the shops. "I had a hell of a time trying to answer Tony's history questions. Poor boy was so confused when I mentioned the Prime Minister. Do you think we should tell him that we're not from here?"

"I don't think he'll believe you," said Rose honestly. And truth be told, it was a far-fetched story. She hadn't mentioned her origins to the people at Torchwood until the stars started disappearing, at which point it had become the most relevant fact about her. Even then, some of them were still unsure about her.

"I suppose it doesn't matter," said Jackie, eyeing up a jacket. "I mean we're here now, and you can't change the past, can you." Rose once again said nothing.

Jackie knew something was wrong with her daughter, but knew prying was useless. Rose would never tell her. She would never want to truly admit it to herself.

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She came home to find the Doctor standing outside, soaking wet. She sighed to herself, wondering what he'd done this time. He saw Rose and his face broke out into a wide grin.

"Don't you just love that smell?" he said, breathing in deeply. "The smell you get right after it rains for the first time in a long time. Patrichor, I believe it's called."

"It's very nice," agreed Rose, taking the shopping inside, slightly perturbed that she was going to have to do the mop again. But what was the point in getting upset, when he was never going to notice.

"Oh it reminds me of the planet Cralix," said the Doctor, excited to tell a new adventure. "Otherwise known as the planet of jewels. It rained once every hundred years, and after that rainstorm it just smelt so amazing. In fact I think I still got one of the rubies-" The Doctor reached into his pocket and stopped, deflating sightly.

"Must have left it on the TARDIS," he said glumly. "Did I ever take you to Cralix?"

"No, Doctor," said Rose.

"No, it must have been Jo," said the Doctor, suddenly smiling again. "Did I ever tell you about Jo? Now there was a bright young woman ready to take on the world. Even managed to stop herself from being hypnotized by the Master, if you can believe it. It was when he was working for the Orgons I think..."

Rose wished she could go to Cralix, or Neptune, or anywhere other than here. She yearned to travel again, to see the stars, to explore all the strangeness the universe had to offer. Here the best she could get was a trip to the moon, and even then there was nothing to do there but look at the desolate landscape.

"Are you okay," asked the Doctor, sensing Rose's discomfort.

"Hmm?" said Rose. "Oh, yeah, fine. Just a lot on my mind."

"I know what you mean," said the Doctor with a grin. "I've got ten of them."

Rose let out a small smile, in the hopes of making him feel better. There wasn't really anything else to do.

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Sixteen years. Sixteen years as far as she could tell, if it was really 2025. Time ran slightly differently in this parallel world, and truth be told she'd stopped keeping track of time a long time ago. It was all relative, wasn't it? A few months of adventure could seem to go by in the blink of an eye, but the daily grind of getting up, going to work, eating chips... it made twenty years seem like two-hundred. Every day seemed to blend together in one long, dull slog, and yet it never seemed to get any faster. It was the same thing, day in, day out. No escape.

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The fight wasn't pretty, but it was far from unusual.

"I didn't want to stay here!" cried Rose at the face of the man who stranded her in an alternate Earth for reasons she never quite understood.

"I didn't want to be human!" countered the Doctor, nine-hundred years of fury burning deep inside him. "Do you think its easy, knowing the things I know, being surrounded by idiots? I use to be an adventurer, touching alien sand and hearing the strange cries of alien birds, watching them wheel across alien skies. Now the most adventurous thing that happens is when we go to Devon for the weekend!"

"I hate you!" screamed Rose, aimed at the Doctor, aimed at the alternate world around her, aimed at herself for getting herself into this mess in the first place. If only she'd ignored what the Doctor said, if only she'd gotten back on the TARDIS, if only this half-human clone had never appeared. He wasn't the Doctor, not really. He was an imitation, just like everything else here.

The Doctor said nothing, knowing that it was pointless. Nine hundred years of travel and he'd never gotten into a lover's quarrel, and now it seemed to be happening every other week. Every day the stupid monkeys came to him with their pathetic little problems and it made him sick to his stomach. At least when he was at UNIT he had the Brigadier, and Jo, and the chance of actually escaping the planet as he worked on his TARDIS. Here he had nothing, nothing except a bunch of humans he could never hope to relate to.

The two travelers locked eyes on each other, neither saying a word. They both realized the futility of their situation. They couldn't leave, not really. No one else really understood them. The Doctor had tried to leave, tried to set off across the world, but found that there was only so much he could see and do. One planet might seem big to some, but relatively speaking it was tiny for him. And as for being stuck in one time, slowly plodding forward bit by bit... He'd seen all he could see, as he couldn't go anywhere or anywhen else. He couldn't experience something new.

Rose knew it was pointless trying to leave him. Despite her displeasure at the situation he understood her more than anyone else. She'd traveled with him, seen the universe with him, and no one she ever met could really grasp what that truly meant. Any attempts at making friends was dwarfed by their distances in perspective. Relatively speaking, they just weren't on the same wavelength. And the dating scene wasn't much better. No man really understood her like the Doctor had.

The Doctor was the first to leave, as he was want to do. It was his solution to everything: Make a mess, then run away before he had to clean it up. He had tried to love her, he really had. But nine hundred years of lifetimes versus her minuscule experience... It was just too incompatible.

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The Doctor came back, eventually. Rose calmed down, eventually. In the grand scheme of things, the fighting took up so little of their time together. They were short fights, intense, but short. But they were short much the same way that sticking your hand into flames for a few seconds was brief. Time was relative, and it's what you did with that time that mattered. So the two stayed together, not quite in love, but neither quite willing to let other go. Neither really happy, but neither wanting to make things worst. Two beings with an insurmountable distance between them, and between them and the rest of the world.

If there was one thing that stayed, one thing that stretched out the time, it was the bitter regret Rose felt every time she looked at her family. Would Jackie have been better at home? Was it fair for her mother to leave that life behind? Should Rose have walked away from the madman in the box all those years ago? Regret consumed her, and would consume her, as she wondered whether the Doctor, her Doctor, even remembered her at all.

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"Whatever happened to that other regeneration of yours?" asked Clara, as she sat with the Doctor. "The one with the same face?"

"I don't know," said the Doctor. "Never really thought about it. I suspect he's happy though. I mean he got to go live with one of the most wonderful companions I ever had, while never having to worry about outliving her. If you ask me, that's a pretty happy ending, isn't it?"

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Author's Note: This story was inspired by a prompt I was given:

Romantic tension/angst.

Use the word _petrichor_

The Einstein quote about relativity: that an hour talking to a pretty girl feels like minutes while sitting on a hot poker for a minute feels like hours. You can find it.

Unhappily resolved angst that is _not_ GitF related.

Bonus if you write a short original _tanka. (Structure: 5-7-5-7-7)_

No more than 5,000 words.

Make it multi-chapter, or oneshot. Whatever.

A semi/precious gem - amethyst, ruby or topaz preferred.

An interesting sock pattern.

Set in the year 2025, as a "years later" thing.

Rose, Ten. _Or_ for kicks, Eleven.


End file.
